Bitef

»Come! And the day will be ours« is not an indignant cry against the conscious politics of deceit by the whites against the Indians. It is not moral rage against the attitude that many whites incarnated : » The only good Indian is a dead Indian «. That would be hypocritical. Why use our indignation against something that can no longer be fought, that is already history? Perhaps it is a reflection, even though contradictory, on the way one man destroys another in the name of values which he believes to be universal. On our encounter with whatever is different: hidden forces nevertheless well known determine it. History reveals to us the ingenious violence hidden behind words such a s Altruism, Progress and Truth. In southern Italy, among the people of Salento and Barbagia, we could feel in their daily struggle for survival the remnants of a culture, of a tradition, of an inheritance which was slowly crumbling, infected by the values of the new times. Why did I think of a reservation as I watched the old men seated immobile in the shade, the women dressed in black as they hurried by with their burdens, the young dressed in bright colours who paraded up and down the streets of the village like animals in a cage. I felt that sometime in a not so distant past, in this same place, there had been live roots uniting, nourishing, giving meaning to each daily act. Yet I knew that at that same time hunger was greater, work more exhausting, more children died, and larger was the disproportion between the few who made heads bow and the many who had to bow them. But this logic of things known could not silence the other emotional logic: today these villages seemed to be drained of their sap, segregated from the rest of the world, from its rhyrhm and colours, as though, in order to advance they had to disown their own past and drown in an alien future, created by others. To disownt heir own past like the emigrant, like those who must integrate. To lose their own identity. In reality »useless« villages, with their poor value represented by their moagrely industrialised agriculture. Useful only as a reservoir of potential workers for distant factories. A Reservation, as originally intended by the American government, was a large territory owned entirely by the Indians and administered by them, with no intervention on the part of the whites. Hunger for land caused the breaking of all the treaties, until the Indian territory was reduced to such a size that »Reservation« became synonimous with » confinement «, with an underhand attempt at forced assimilation: make the red similar to the white. But who were those pioneers who in hundreds of thousands pushed the frontier further and further westward, towards a promised land which opened up before their eyes, boundless, waiting only to bear fruit? They were the times when in Europe children were working twelve hours a day in the mines and the mills, times when the industrial revolution drew hundreds of thousands of peasants to the towns where they were forced to sell their own labour and that of their families. Beyond the ocean there is an almost empty continent where it is possible to

live in dignity and freedom from the fruits of one’s own work. Why should we be indignant if the freedom of a few thousand nomadic hunters is not respected: people who know nothing of tilling the soil and whose backward ways hinder the chance of a decent life for millions of disinherited Europeans? For many Indian tribes man’s model was the bison. Bisons were free to roam the prairies, strong, ready to fight and not frightened by any obstacle. In the mating season they danced away all their strength, making the earth tremble, ready to confront any rival. But what does the individual deed of the warrior signify in front of far more important historical concepts and perspectives? The pioneer is different. He struggles against the forces of nature, against his own limits, with the dignity and the pride of the man who won’t give in, determined to go further. He is useful, efficient, perpetually laborious, avoiding excesses. He goes far, so far that by an implacable law of dialections he transforms every value into its opposite: he excludes all who do not direct their lives according to his own values. We would like to possess clear-cut, unequivocal truths, to be able to say perhaps in a performance this is how things are, or are not. We are attracted by the truths we seek, as our eyes by the moon, even though it does not shine with its own light and has a hidden face. I watch our latest performance. I can hear within me the voice of the »Indian« and the voice of the » pioneer «. They come from opposite banks, intermingling, contradicting, conflicting, each tempting with its arguments. The symptoms of a new life merge with the signs of the imminent catastrophe. The mad horse is set free to fly and fall, in pursuit of his own visions. If you refuse to act, if you refuse to simulate, then there is nothing left for you to do hut to mirror your experiences, reflect with all your body on your own history, on yourself in history. So, what is your condition as an actor? Egoism which overflows into actions, oversteps limits, shatters the circle, leaves scars? There are moments when, at the centre of your own madness, you can navigate on the current of your obscure forces, bringing them to the surface, not struggling against them, but showing that it is possible to unchain and guide them, taking them in hand and transforming them into something which uses your » diversity « as a ford where others can cross to meet you. There are moments when your condition is stripped bare and is reduced to your craft. But what is our craft reduced to? To a typical example of waste, potlatch. The destruction of energies, of goods: the theatre is useless, it does not produce, it does not accumulate. On the contrary, it squanders. A vast investment of energy for a minimal return. But you are safe in the well defined and acknowledged circle of the theatre where, amongst comrades, colleagues, friends, ensmies, critics and spectators, its value is artificially inflated, protected and over-evaluated. However, if you take your craft to a region without theatre,